I've been reading Mrs. Keays book and I really enjoy her comments on the old roses, particularly the 40 years of HPs. She keeps mentioning Gloire de Rosa???
Have you grown it Kim? It is one of those mythical classics that keep coming up in my readings.
She mentions some wonderful HPs that seem to be "lost".
Susan

It is interesting, though rather confusing to me. In my garden Gloire de Rosamanes doesn't do well and La Reine does. Most grafted roses in at least California are Dr. Huey. I know Huey does well here. I've been told that R. Multiflora rootstcok doesn't work well in Californa though my roses from Pickering have been very healthy. At this point the majority of my roses are own root. Mostly this works very well. Some early HTs are slow on own root but with patience develope. I'll say again that it confuses me. Some roses inexplicably do not do well despite my best intentions.

Hi Kim: Thanks for that excerpt, very fluent writing .. I enjoy it. Dr. Huey does well in the dry clay in my garden, but he perishes with wet clay.

I dug up Knock-outs that has both roots (Dr. Huey and own-root), and Dr. Huey is still many times bigger than the own-root. Only Meilland and Romanticas own-root can compete with Dr. Huey. These French roots knit across the surface like a tree's root, I could not plant annuals next to them. Here in zone 5a I never water my Knock-outs grafted on Dr. Huey, and I don't water Romantica roses either.

Niels in Denmark shared his observation that only Peace, a Meilland rose, survived 50+ years as own-root in his zone 5b. Here Chicagoland is a good test ... if an own-root is wimpy, it can't survive our -20 F winter, nor my rock-hard clay.

Dr. Huey is so hard to kill. I don't like grafted-on-Dr. Huey since I'm paranoid that he takes over the garden if my house is for sale. He's a BIG eye-sore in foreclosure houses, a hard task to get rid of.

Gloire des Rosomanes ("Ragged Robin") is so tough, it was once a popular rootstock. So, you find rootstock reversions all over -- in SoCal, as well as NoCal.

In most old cemeteries, and deserted gardens where I have seen it, and in my own garden, this is a lovely rose. (If you don't mind single-to-semi-double roses). It is a fast-enough repeater to be called continuous-blooming, and I've never seen it to have disease problems.

Here, you see it in the Sacramento City Cemetery. I don't know what more one could ask of a rose.

Jeri

Kim, was the article written before the connection between soil ph, and rose cultivation was well understood?

Jeri,
thanks for posting your photo of an old friend. I feel a sense of warm familiarity whenever I see Gloire des Rosomanes and was going to say I wonder why it is not more popular among those who grow old roses, until I peeked at helpmefind.com which lists "82 favorite" votes for it. Any rose that gets more than 50 votes there is very popular. I can imagine the frenzy of excitement in 1825 among rose gardeners as they became aware that another remontant rose had been bred in Europe, and one that has great re-bloom, too.
Luxrosa

I don't know, Lux. Was pH well understood in the mid Nineteenth Century? Come to think of it, though, I have noticed in the places I've planted Ragged Robin, La Reine was unsuccessful. I can grow RR here, but NOT La Reine, too much disease where Ragged Robin is spotless. Yes, Susan, I have grown Gloire des Rosomanes and I love it. Other than being semi double, so each bloom isn't quite as long lasting as it might be with more petals, there is nothing NOT to like about it here. Kim

This post was edited by roseseek on Tue, May 7, 13 at 0:21

I found the book online. Interesting to read his perspectives on roses. I haven't made it very far but here's another interesting quote:

"But according to the stock, or rather according to the nature of the roots, must be the treatment. When worked on briers, a moist, deep, rich clay soil will be the best possible; briers will do well on heavily-manured loam, but very badly on chalk and gravel. If worked on Manetti, it matters not what the soil is, but the better the soil, the finer the flowers. Those who live on gravel, sand or chalk soil should grow only Manetti roses; and these, if liberally manured, will be better than brier roses or those on their own roots. The Manetti is the only stock which may be made available for the growth of roses on ungenial soils, and for that purpose there is no limit to its use; it is, in fact, a good feeder to the rose it carries under any and every circumstance. p. 43

I know Manetti was used as a rootstock in earlier times; was it superseded by Dr. Huey?

One other thing that has been a problem with the soil I have is buried asphalt chunks. I found them when a noisette, 'Cato's Cluster' wouldn't thrive and in another spot where grass wouldn't grow. Especially sad since those are sunny spots, all too few in my yard. They used them to stabilize the soil near the edge of our cliff, so we can't easily remove them. I do wish they'd spent the extra dollars and bought rock instead of the probably free asphalt chunks they used.

Interesting subject, thanks, Kim.
Gean

Here is a link that might be useful: The Rose Book, free download

Those who live on gravel, sand or chalk soil should grow only Manetti roses

Solid chalk and all on 'briers' here - not a 'Manetti' in sight. I guess that's where I'm going wrong . . .
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Best wishes
Jon

well, ahem, must concur with Jon - I am simply bemused by this assertion that canina needs deep rich loam since this is the main wildling to be found on Cambridge chalk hills. Mind, canina has been superceded by laxa which will grow in anything, having a stumpy great taproot.
As for ph in the 19c, it was most certainly understood - the Victorians were the most 'scientific' gardeners, completely horrified by the lax amateurishness which had been characterised (in their eyes) by the landscape movements of the 18C. If there was only one thing which can be taken from Victorian gardeners, it was their love of scientific improvement, using the first pesticides (copper, nicotine), gardening tools and methods such as hotbedding and forcing.

Well, from this article on manetti in hmf from the American Rose Annual, 1953, p. 178, it appears that gardeners have a long and distinguished history of arguing. I guess Mr. Hibberd was in Thomas Rivers' camp. Beautiful picture, Jon! Gean

Almost immediately a very heated argument developed between the rose growers of England, both professional and amateur, regarding the merits of the new understock. Mr. Rivers hailed it as a cure all and as a panacea for all rose propagation difficulties. William Paul, who was a'young man at the time, was opposed to the novelty and continued to be for many years. As time passed it became evident that the Manetti understock was not the salvation of rose growers nor was it the great evil that Mr. Paul maintained. It did not displace Rosa canina nor the Boursalts nor Rosa laxa, nor the old stock Celine but it did come to have some very special uses for which it has as yet been unsupplanted and unsurpassed. First among these was its use as a stock for forcing roses, secondly it was used, for dwarf varieties, and third it was extensively used as a stock in areas where the soil was very sandy. The reason for the bad feeling between Mr. Rivers and Mr . Paul over this stock more than 100 years ago is probably that the two modes of budding and grafting then in vogue were not both suitable for Manetti. Some growers of that time ( 1840) , Mr. Rivers among them, budded their materials very low so that there was practically no part of the stem that was the stock variety. Mr. Paul and many others budded their material high with as much as nine or ten inches of the stock between the roots and the head, making a sort of short tree rose affair . Manetti works very well for low budding and rather poorly for the high budding then practiced. Rosa canina.worked well for high budding and so a most vitriolic discussion resulted over their relative merits because with Mr. Rivers and his sandy soil and low budding, Manetti worked fine. With Mr. Paul using high budding and planting in a heavy clay soil Manetti was rather unsuccessful. However, even Mr. Paul was growing his dwarfs and forcing varieties on Manetti by 1850. Mr. Paul had discontinued his attacks upon Manetti at about this time as well. With the introduction from Asia of Rosa multiflora in its several forms (R. polyantha, and the Crimson Rambler being most important) a new series of stocks were tried of which our hardy Multiflora stock of today is the most important. For American conditions R. canina worked very poorly and the French stock called in England and the United States, Ragged Robin, had but a relatively brief popularity. From R. multiflora hybrids several new stocks were developed one of which is very important as most California grown roses are budded onto it. Veilchenblau, Tausendschon and Dr. Huey belong to this group. Today Dr. Huey (called Shafter in the trade) is the principal California rootstock. It has been 125 years since this rootstock was introduced. It is strange that the hybridizer has not produced a better stock for greenhouse use. It may be that the perfect genetic compliment for a greenhouse understock exists in Manetti and that John Champney made possible our modern cut rose industry.

I like what Jeri wrote about Ragged Robin: "In most old cemeteries, and deserted gardens where I have seen it, and in my own garden, this is a lovely rose ... It is a fast-enough repeater to be called continuous-blooming, and I've never seen it to have disease problems. "

The pic. Jeri posted looks great! I wish people use RR instead of Dr. Huey. He doesn't even bloom in my zone 5a ... too cold for Dr. Huey, but he exists as a 8' x 8' public eyesore ... impossible to dig up at abandoned houses.

Just want to remind people of the unfortunate confusion that has now lasted centuries - Rosa Laxa and the canina hybrid 'laxa' (in fact a group of successive developments purely for the purpose of understocks) as used almost exclusively in the UK are very distinct animals. I have noticed in recent years that the major growers have moved back from rugosa to a multiflora-form for standards.

Best wishes
Jon

Another thought strikes - almost all roses at the time these august and self-believing reverend gentlemen were writing were budded as standards; at the least as dwarf standards. What we term 'bush' or 'shrub' roses were rare, and were in fact referred to as 'dwarves'.

This has great consequence for gardens in harsh Northern climates, and may well have a larger influence on the choice of rootstock than we have to consider nowadays. Indeed, as late as 1972 the new plantings at Mottisfont Abbey were carried out by planting the rootstocks according to the design plan, then budding the scions in situ, though this was partly due to constrains of time and available labour. The result was, of course, bud unions up in the air and exposed to the winds, rains and frosts. David Stone replaced these with plants 'worked low' over the succeeding decades, in line with our now-common practice of burying the bud union below soil level.

This is an extant example of the common 'dwarf standard' rarely seen these days - 'worked high' - of the rose 'Homere' I photographed two summers ago in Sussex. The rose is said to have been planted in 1862.
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And the blooms it is still capable of producing, though the plant itself is much diminished:
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Best wishes
Jon

The more things change... Interesting to learn those arguments have raged for as long as they have, isn't it? Strawberry, Huey replaced RR as a stock in the US because it rooted more easily; is more cold hardy; performs better across a wider portion of the country and was compatible with many more types and varieties of roses. When you're producing a product for everywhere, you take the most suitable compromise. Good, bad or indifferent.

Standards in the US were frequently budded on IXL because it produces an enormous whip in a year (often an inch or thicker), but it also sun scalds very easily and requires a great deal of room to produce sufficient quantities of them. Huey has replaced IXL as standard stock here in the US. IXL flows more sap over greater lengths than Huey, which is one reason (cost and demand being the other major reasons) why it's harder to find standards taller than 36" here now. De la Grifferaie has also been used for taller (to 8+ feet) weeping standards due to its ability to flow copious sap over long lengths. Kim

Thanks for this informative discussion, folks. I'm enjoying reading it.

I am enjoying the discussion too! Never knew Gloire was
Ragged Robin. Always loved that name.
Jon, does your garden appear as lovely to you as it does in photographs?
When you see it do you sigh and think to yourself, "who needs a roof, I'll sleep out here"?
Jeri that photo is awesome!
Thanks for sharing the knowledge. I find interesting tidbits on about every other page in Mrs. Keays' book.
Susan

Thanks for your kind remark, Susan. But if you know English weather the idea of sleeping in the garden loses some appeal! Though I have been known to doze there after a particularly good lunch :)

Some years ago a visitor from this forum found the same thing:
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Best wishes
Jon

I don't have any problem sleeping under an umbrella.
Thanks for sharing!

Reading these threads is like an education unto itself...I learn so much when I read these.

Well, I think I'm learning...half the time, I can't follow the conversation, but surely, if I keep reading, I'll glean something?

Thank you to all of you experienced, well-read, and expert rosarians for sharing your knowledge. It is inspiring to a new gardener like myself. It makes me want to get my hands on some of these books you all reference and soak in some knowledge!

Rachel